If He Could Change Things
by achildofthestars
Summary: Oneshot. A little bit about a darker Booth, one that has killed, and has killed his last target. One that is realizing he can't do it any longer.


A/N: Well, I'm stuck in the Bones ficworld. No ideas seem to stick, except for this little oneshot. I may actually be only oneshots from now on, but anyways, like that matters. This is Booth...a darker Booth. Tell me what you think, because I really don't know what to make of this bit.

* * *

If he could change things. He would. There would be no question about it. He would trade his memories and nightmares for peace and dreams. There is no going back though, and this he knows more than anything.

He holds the barrel tightly to his chest, the words of some shaman running through his head before the veil of darkness covers him again. Without thinking, he begins to lay low among the brush, not noticing the brush and needles poking into his camouflaged body. This is his life. A life that has become the air he breathes, even when he doesn't want to.

Looking through his clean scope, he finds the image one of a picture once hung in his grandmother's house. It vanishes as soon as he realizes why he is here. There is no place for frivolous thoughts now. He makes himself comfortable, lying on his stomach, his arms bracing the rifle he's carried for the past two months. There will be a new weapon after this one. He never uses the same rifle more than two times.

If he could change things. He would. This is what he knows, however, and what he knows best. He rids the world of men, and women in some cases, who deserve to lose their place of life in this world.

He is not ashamed of this. He is ashamed that he has started to care. Once, he had been the man with no feeling while on the trail. Now, as years go by, he finds himself pausing with remorse as the ghosts keep walking behind him, slowly building. But we all do things we know we shouldn't. It never stops us.

The tenseness of his body gives way to utter relaxation. His hands become as steady as the hard stone of mountains and concrete buildings. Even his breathing slows to barely more than a whisper of the leaves shielding his toned body from wary eyes. The wind picks up, barely tickling the hairs of the eyelashes beneath his dark eyes glaring at the scene through his red scope.

If he could change things. He would. Whenever he goes home, he's not the same man. He's lost a part of himself, and everyone sees, but never says anything. He can hide it, and it's become easier, but he can't erase it.

The target walks out of the small hut he'd been hiding in. The man stands casually in the doorway, without a care and without fear. He holds an unlit cigarette between his right fingers. The sandals under his feet are simple and homemade, probably from the woman who steps out from the doorway behind him just a second too late, or a second too early.

His finger reaches the trigger before his mind registers the young woman. The bullet fires twice before he can stop it. The man falls to the ground, cigarette softly falling out of his grasp to the dirt, before the woman opens her mouth. The last motion she will live to do as she falls as well, the wound dripping cleanly from the place her heart had once beat. Two shots, done without hesitation, done with learned instinct, done with taught apathy.

If he could change things. He would. He walks into his bedroom, feeling more a stranger than before. He sits on his bed, wondering if this is actually life. His life. It is. He doesn't want it.

His hands begin to shake, hands that are usually the steadiest of any living thing. He clenches them tightly, afraid that they will take the weapon he has hidden in a drawer, and use the same calmness to make him his next victim. He breathes deep, the breaths of a dying man, struggling to catch the next wave.

This won't be the last. He's not done, or so he thinks. His pride of his country won't let him stop. His conscience will quiet down after a game a gambler never forgets. He lets himself fall to the carpeted floor, his hands covering his face, trying to forget, trying to remember. He's a tired man. He just wants his dreams back. He just wants the ghosts to vanish, to disappear like he wants too, but knows they won't. He doesn't cry. Until now, until today, until he's reached his final breaking point.

If he could change things. He would.


End file.
